


You Strike My Side By Accident

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pining, Secret Saps, but also sappyness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:32:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7383739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Flint is out on the latest raid, Silver accidentally finds his journal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Strike My Side By Accident

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xJuniperx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xJuniperx/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [xJuniperx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xJuniperx/pseuds/xJuniperx) in the [pirate_prompts_2016](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/pirate_prompts_2016) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Silver reads Flint's journal.
> 
> Flint feels he has no one to talk to candidly, and so he addresses his entries to Thomas, as if speaking to him. It is cathartic for him. Maybe he writes often, or maybe he only writes before/during/after heightened situations. He puts all his true feelings, insecurities, hopes, confusions, joys, frustrations, memories, etc in there. He muses on Silver a lot, particularly while they are separated (like when Silver stays behind on the Maroon island.) Silver reads it (on accident or on purpose, up to you; once or on multiple occasions, up to you) and is totally drawn in. Also up to you whether or not Flint finds out.
> 
> Has the potential to be anywhere from fluffy to unbelievably angsty. A great opportunity to dig into Flint's psyche, as well as Silver's as he's reacting to what he's reading. And if you can work in smut, all the better.

_4th of August, 1715_

_My love_ ,

_My Thomas. It is to you that I address these entries, for you have ever been the keeper of my secrets, my heart, my all. You and I, my love, we believed in a different god. A merciful god. A god who would have opened up his arms and collected you to his bosom. I have never seen anyone else so like unto Him as you were. Your god, Thomas, would he have forgiven me? Would you, after all that I have done?_

_I have killed the only friend I had in this world, other than Miranda. That was days ago. It seems like it was an eternity ago. So much has happened since then, so much water under the bridge. So much water…_

_I tried to go to you. I tried to go to the place where I hoped your god would reunite us, Thomas, but the devil stopped me. The devil, he too has a beautiful face, and the voice of an angel, and he is the Father of Lies. The devil had stood over me as I held Hal Gates’ lifeless body in my arms and he had stood by me. He has been with me, pursuing me, goading me onwards. He has to be. He has to be Lucifer himself._

_I miss you, Thomas, more than I can say._

_J._

 

End of entry.

Silver’s fingers caressed the pages before him. It had been unlike Flint to leave this journal lying about unchecked, but then again, it had also not been like Flint to do many things lately. He had rushed out of his cabin and onto another sally before Silver could even suggest that perhaps he should eat his dinner first. But Flint would dine that night, all right. On the blood of their colonial oppressors.

He wasn’t going to read the journal. In truth, he had simply intended to check their coordinates, assuming the leatherbound book to be Flint’s log. And then… _My love_.

Something had leapt in Silver’s chest upon beholding those words. To imagine Flint as even being capable of them - that alone was unthinkable. But for a moment, the briefest moment, so fleeting that Silver almost did not catch it, he had believed those words had been addressed to _him_. His heart fluttered, his face flushed, his knees buckled, and fell into the chair before Flint’s desk lest what was left of his legs gave out.

And then, all blood drained from his face for - behold! - a rival. _Thomas_. Who the hell was Thomas! Who was he, this phantom who would now haunt Silver’s dreams (when they weren’t being haunted by images of a maniac swinging a pummel over him)?

Before that terrifying moment, before _Thomas_ and the journal, Silver had not dared to hope. Had not realized he had been hoping at all. Had been holding his breath. Had been watching his lips. Flint’s lips. James’ lips. _James_ that’s what the beautiful cursive _J_ had stood for. So simple, so elegant, so intimate. Like a lover’s caress.

Silver couldn’t stand it! His hand clenched over the leather binding and for a brief span of time he contemplated tossing it out of the great storm windows. But then - _The devil, he too has a beautiful face_. His fingers twitched, he turned the cover and allowed his eyes to read over those lines again. Flint had written about him.

So he was Lucifer, was he? Then how did Flint view himself? As the Archangel Michael with his flaming sword, protecting that gates of Paradise - ha! Is that what he was doing out there that night? Raining down divine vengeance upon the heads of those who would dare defy him? A vengeful angel of the Lord. He served a different god than “Thomas’ god.” The merciful god - no! Flint did not believe in him anymore.

 

_6th of August, 1715_

_My love,_

_How strange it is sometimes. We think we know and recognize ourselves, only to have a man hold up a mirror and to no longer know our own reflection. And then you stare in horror at the thing you have become and ask - is this truly I? Am I this monster? And if the answer is ‘yes,’ then was the monster always within me? Was it within me in London, when I had told you I loved you and lay in your arms and found the only Heaven that will ever welcome me? How then did you ever manage to love me back?_

_The devil has tested me again today. I wonder if he too had found me wanting. How did this man worm his way onto my ship, into my crew, into my life? I caught myself this night genuinely caring about what he thought of me. He is a cipher, a spectre, and soon he will be gone, when his devil’s work is finished. Sometimes we must all make our pacts with devils._

_But sometimes, I think, I see him, the same way that he sees me. And that of all the men on my crew he is the only one who’s real. He is just another test that I must pass. And then I’ll have the gold, and I shall sleep again._

_Why do I never dream of you these days?_

_J._

 

End of entry.

Silver had remembered that night well, when he had sat in this very place and told Flint it did not matter to him one bit whether he was the villain or the hero of the story. But it had mattered to Flint. So much so, that it had driven him back into this phantom lover’s arms, the phantom lover of the journal.

He must have been dead, of this Silver was almost certain. He could not be a threat to him. And yet. And yet, he was the angel against whose memory Silver would ever be nothing but the devil. Even now, even now that he had given up a limb for Flint’s crew, had given up his gold, had given up his very _life_ for the privilege of remaining on the _Walrus_ , is that how Flint saw him still?

He had not counted on Silver still being there in his life, well - the laugh’s on both of them! They were stuck with each other, weren’t they? Like some elaborate dance that they had been dancing, the steps of which were known to destiny alone.

What else? What else would the journal tell him?

 

_10th of August, 1715_

_My dear Thomas_ ,

_I had been wrong to despair and it is Miranda herself who has shown me the way. Without her, I would have been nothing. Unmoored in this wild place, I would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean long before now. She is the only other person who knew what it was like to love you. Because of her, I feel a part of you lives on still, in our joint hearts. And now, she may have found a way to save Nassau, and - you would laugh - but it involves the daughter of our old friend Lord Peter Ashe._

_I had told her my name, Thomas, my real name. It had been so long since I had spoken those words aloud. Who is that man anymore? Is he even really still there, beneath this carefully constructed guise of Captain Flint? For her, for Abigail, I had conjured him again, and there he was. And now that I have resurrected him, I do not know that I can bury him again, and wear the mask of Flint for much longer. They are so heavy, are they not, the masks that we are all forced to wear? You hated masks. And wigs. And titles. You only cared for the truth, the universal truth._

_The truth is, Thomas, that with each day I forget your face more and more. And then there is also his face, which is a face I see every day. He looks nothing like you, but little by little, his features start to replace yours. I clung to the mere facsimile of your portrait when last I visited Miranda to see if I could still recall your features, but it was never a very good likeness. He is Lucifer, he is the one who denies, his words are lies wrapped in temptation. He could never love me like you loved me, Thomas, but so help me I want him. I want him._

_Forgive me._

_J._

 

End of entry.

Who the hell was this man? Who the hell was James Flint? Silver’s ears were filled with a deafening noise, which he had not immediately identified as his own blood pounding against his eardrum.

He must have been mistaken. Flint could not have meant what he had written - not about Silver. He had overstepped, he had overreached, and it was time to get out before he saw anything else. Before he saw Flint’s demons spill out onto that page the same way Flint had spilled the blood of magistrates throughout England’s colonies.

So, that’s what she had been to him, then, Mrs. Barlow. A vestige of an old love. Perhaps she had been Atlas, all along, when Silver had fancied himself such a Titan, propping up Flint’s entire world upon her delicate, white shoulders. She had been proud and noble, it did not take reading these words to figure it out, one only had to take one look at her. No wonder he had burned down Charles Town, if she had been the rock upon which Flint had built his church.

But a church to what god? This _Thomas_? Or the church to Captain Flint himself? Who _was_ this man! And why did it torture Silver so much that he did not yet know?

 

_15th of August, 1715_

_Thomas,_

_I have lost her._

_I close my eyes and I still see her. And I can’t… I can’t… I have lost her. I have lost both of you. Now only Flint is left._

 

End of entry.

Silver wiped at his eye, for there was something irritating it.

That last entry had been dated months ago; there were no others in the journal. That meant, Silver’s breath halted, that meant that Flint had been reading it, not writing in it, before he stormed off to the latest raid. For a few minutes, Silver did nothing but chew around his thumb nail while his so-called leg scraped against the boards of Flint’s cabin, like a raven portending malfortune scraping at the mast.

He shouldn’t have let him go. He should’ve said something. But what do you say to a man when he’s in mourning? What do you say to a man who is only trying to kill his own grief? If Silver had one wish, one minute during which he could do anything he wanted in the world without any repercussions, he would have wrapped whatever limbs God still left him around the captain and held on to him - held on long enough to save him, long enough to save them both.

_He could never love me like you loved me, Thomas, but so help me I want him. I want him._

Silver wanted too. He yearned with every fiber of his being. And the thing he did not want to be was Flint’s personal devil.

***

Flint still smelled of blood and gunpowder when Silver knocked on his door and poked his head in as they were on their way. It looked like the captain had washed off his hands, but had not bothered to take off his clothes. Silver’s nostrils flared from the scent of blood on them.

“Are you hurt?” he asked with a trembling voice.

“It’s not mine,” Flint replied with his customary gruffness. Silver glanced at the desk and noticed the journal had been removed. _Good_ , he thought. “How are the men?”

“Glad of their share,” Silver gave a measured reply.

“And you?” The question was so quiet, that Silver almost had not heard it.

If he still had his leg, it would have taken him two long strides to get over to where Flint had been slouched in his chair. As it was, Silver dragged his cumbersome appendage behind and propped himself against the desk, facing the captain. He willed Flint to meet his eye but neither spoke nor touched him.

“Is there anything else?” Flint asked, evidently resigned to not getting his question answered.

“I did not tell you yet how I was,” Silver spoke and Flint’s eyes shone like jewels in the candlelight as he looked up. “I am sick.”

“Did you have Howell examine you?”

“I am sick to my soul,” Silver squeezed through his teeth. “I never wanted to be a pirate, but now that I am, I suppose I can take what does not belong to me whenever I please. That’s what we do. That - is freedom.”

“If that is how you see it,” Flint shrugged.

“It is a lie. I cannot take the thing I want most.”

“Your independence?” Flint frowned.

“No. I don’t give a toss for my independence, and, truth be told, I haven’t in quite some time. I could have left. I could have been free of you more times than you know.”

“Then why…”

“Because I _want_ to be here. With you. If you would have me. If you would…” He had to stop talking. Some moisture too uncomfortably close to tears was creeping up on his eyes, choking his words, constricting his breath.

“John…” Flint’s voice was soft, as was his hand that landed like a butterfly over Silver’s own.

“If you would only see…”

“I see.” Flint rose. Silver could smell the blood on his clothes even stronger now. “I see you.”

And then, before he could embarrass himself further, Silver simply reached and wrapped his fingers around the back of Flint’s neck, bringing their mouths together. A moan escaped him, a long breath trapped beneath his diaphragm that he did not even realize he’d been holding. It was swallowed by Flint’s kiss. Flint’s hands tangled in his hair, ran over his shoulders, caressed his lower back, were somehow nowhere and everywhere at once. His own clothes would probably smell of some poor sod’s spilled blood soon too. But there was yet time to shed them.

There was yet time to rewrite what had been written. No one knew the power of words better than John Silver. There was yet time.

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is a line from the Leonard Cohen's "Avalanche" which was performed by Nick Cave for the credits of 2x09
> 
> The dates I used were arrived at with the help of [this amazing timeline post](http://alkyones.tumblr.com/post/141857003355/black-sails-speculative-timeline-season-one). And thanks to Elle for finding it for me! You da best!


End file.
